English Lit.

I recently got one of those forwarded messages from a friend. The ones that you are supposed to read, modify and forward to other people. Except this was not really a message but a facebook note in which I was tagged. It was about a list of 100 books made by BBC. The broadcaster supposedly alleged most people only have read an average of 6 of the books included. I was supposed to go through the list, bold the books I have read in their entirety and italicize the ones I only started reading but did not finish, or read only an excerpt. Then I was to create my own note with the list and tag the friend who sent me the message along with other “book nerds” explaining the process so that it could all be publicized and compared.

When I received the note I immediately felt ashamed because I already knew that I was about to confront one of my biggest insecurities – my literary command, and that I was thrown into a game that I could not win. It is not that I consider myself stupid or incapable of playing this game and in fact, if what BBC says about this list is correct then I am above the level of the average reader (at least in England), but I still feel panicky when I see myself forced to discuss this topic in public.

I will not make my own note for my Facebook acquaintances to see and I will not tag anyone in it, but if I did, this is what it would look like:

Évita from ET AL., ETC.

This is really lazy but I'm going to redirect to another post from another blog that is not mine. But basically Évita talks about the things she makes.

AM needs a projector.

This might be the last painting that I make in which the image is not traced directly from a projector. For this one I used the old method of amplifying a sketch with a grid. Realistically though, this process is not fast enough and it is extremely tedious and annoying. I have decided that to produce a justifiable body of work (in terms of time) the drawing has to be completely figured out before the painting is started, and amplified with a projector.